Hello, everybody. Come on in. Welcome to another episode. Today I thought I would share with you an idea or a concept, a thought, I guess, that has been floating around for me. See, I was at this event recently and in the course of a conversation, somebody asked me what it is that I do. I have answered this question hundreds of times.
But this time, I don’t know if it was because who I was talking to or the setting or for some reason, something new came out of my mouth. What I said to her was, I’m a psychologist who provides executive coaching for well-being and for wellness.
I’ve been thinking about that answer and about really the truthfulness of this answer ever since I had this conversation, and I decided I wanted to talk about it today.
So first, as a way of setting the stage, I thought I better make sure we’re really clear on how we’re defining executive coaching. I asked Google for a definition and here is what I got.
An executive coach is a trained professional who helps high level managers and executives improve their work performance, their leadership skills, and their ability to navigate difficult situations. Executive coaches often work with motivated achievement-oriented professionals who want to advance their careers.
Okay, interesting. So, I’m a psychologist and I work a lot with high level managers and executives and also entrepreneurs and professionals who are motivated and achievement oriented, just like the Google says.
Sometimes they want to improve their work performance or their skills or their ability to navigate difficult situations. And this is the place where I get really interested because so much of the time, they’ve actually nailed these pieces of the puzzle. The work performance, the skills, the abilities to navigate their work situations, they’ve nailed that piece of the puzzle or they’re doing pretty well.
But the women I work with for them, it feels like the success that they are achieving in these areas has their personal well-being and their wellness out of balance. It’s like disrupted the balance of the scales. And I just heard myself make that pun that I didn’t even intend to. But anyway, back to what I’m saying.
For the women that I tend to work with work might be going great. Right? They’re doing all the things and checking all the boxes, but they’re not sleeping. Or professionally their work life they’re soaring over there, but in the process, they’ve put on 25 pounds and they can’t get in the groove with eating the way that they used to. Or eating the way that they wish they could.
So for many of the women that I meet and I end up working with, their business or their professional life or their family life has been nurtured into the success that they dreamed of. But they are stress eating and they can’t seem to make it to the gym. Or the habits that they don’t like seem to be the glue that holds everything together.
So as somebody who has a lifelong fascination with helping people solve their life puzzles and leverage missing pieces, I mean, I named my eating program Your Missing Peace because I love putting these things together. It is fascinating to me that we have normalized executive coaching and all the benefits that come from it. But so many amazing women are struggling alone with the other half of the puzzle.
And the truth is, if you are only addressing the work, the leadership, the performance side of things, you’re either creating a house of cards that is not sustainable. Or you’re creating a setup for stress and unhappiness because you’ve built and then solved an equation that doesn’t include what you really need or want or desire.
And let’s talk about those wants and needs and desires for a hot minute, because I have some thoughts about this too. Let’s go back to this idea of executive coaching for wellness and for well-being. I see a world of difference between what I end up helping my clients with because it is what they want a world of difference between that kind of coaching for well-being and traditional wellness coaching.
And I believe this might be very relevant for you, which is why I am recording this episode. The difference between the kind of coaching that I end up doing and traditional wellness coaching, I think of it as the difference between the what and the why.
You do not need to be told to drink green smoothies. Or to meditate or to get to the gym or to develop a two-hour morning routine. You do not need a plan for intermittent fasting or tracking what you eat. In fact, you are an amazingly smart, resourceful person who has probably collected more of these plans and ideas and more information about what to do then you ever wanted. And it hasn’t helped you get where you want to go. It has probably led to a lot of overwhelm and stress.
I would be willing to bet that if you take a moment and pause this podcast, you could write yourself quite the complete plan of what you think you should be doing to uplevel your wellness and your well-being. You could put it all on paper. You don’t need any more what’s. You don’t need someone to give you another to do list.
Here’s what I believe you need. You need someone in your corner who knows that you are smart and resourceful, even when you are not feeling it so much. You need someone in your corner who can help you untangle why you know all the things. Why you’ve solved all the world problems that you address on a daily basis. And, why you find yourself in this place, the place that you are with your own wellness, your own well-being, and quite likely with your eating.
It’s the difference between getting more “what’s”, what to do’s “what’s”, and looking at the why. I help you look at the why. I think that is an executive coach for well-being and wellness. Guess what? When you get the help and the support so that you can stop treating your well-being and your happiness as another to do list “What”? That you don’t have time for? You actually change the game.
When you stop loading up your programming, your social feeds with experts and influencers who are helping you load up your to do list with more wellness hot tips and hacks and things to do. The game changes. Talk about executive coaching. When you figure out how to own the power that comes from meeting your own needs, when you address the hidden hungers resulting from the stress, resulting from being too busy, from tough situations and the emotions that come with them from exhaustion and overwhelm and from too little self-care and me time.
When you address these things, everything else changes, including the way you show up and feel professionally. Including your eating. You know, the food, that Band-Aid that was holding everything together. So you could be the high performer that you are.
So you think you’re soaring in so many areas now, wait until your well-being and your wellness are aligned.
The more I hear myself talking and recording this episode, I am definitely owning the title executive coach for well-being and wellness. I think it’s really important. And here’s another thing I said that what you don’t need is another to do list as Much as we think we want to be told what to do It is so important to reinforce the reality that you are already over- doing You do not need a wellness to do list.
What you need is what I’ve actually spent my whole professional life as a psychologist helping women with. And that’s important stuff that you might not have on your current wellness to do list. Like getting to the root of the problem, the patterns, the habits, so that you can extricate them from your life and you can move on.
Why are you scrolling at bedtime and shortchanging yourself on sleep? Why can’t you stop the mindless eating or the stress eating patterns? How come the scale keeps going up and all your intentions to do something different fizzle out? Where did your motivation go? Getting to the root of these big, huge questions changes everything.
And that is so different from what you get with a wellness to do list. That is executive coaching for well-being.
Being successful and being broadly successful in your life, as well as in your profession, has so many nuances. What you need is less of a just do it approach and instead somebody who can help you see the subtle and the not-so-subtle nuances of how you’re sabotaging yourself.
We all do it. The history that you bring to this pattern. Let’s talk about overeating. What’s the history behind that? How are you sabotaging yourself? What are the thoughts and the beliefs that you might believe make you stronger but are actually setting you up for burnout and way more stress than necessary?
Again as a psychologist I have spent decades helping women with this stuff and when we apply it Strategically to this area of your life it is so powerful.
Are you beginning to hear the difference between piling on more “what’s”, what to do, what should I do, adding to your to do list versus getting really deep and digging out the whys and taking care of the whys? Why am I overeating? Why am I stressed? Why am I overwhelmed?
There’s another piece that is heavily rooted in psychology, and that is discovering the difference between a success mindset that is based on powering through and overdoing and quite possibly over pleasing other people and definitely under prioritizing your own needs.
There’s a huge difference between that and building and fostering, nurturing a set of beliefs and approaches to motivating and inspiring yourself that creates success. And also simultaneously build a path to wellness and well-being and health and the things that you’re really craving.
And so back to what I was saying earlier, why is it that we have normalized executive coaching and its benefits, but so many amazing women are struggling alone with the other half of the puzzle? With how to make this fit and work with their lives so that you are being well, so that you have well-being.
Why is it so acceptable to hire a coach to work on one part of the sphere, the professional part, but not the other? That’s actually a rhetorical question because the answer is pretty clear. We live in a culture that glorifies productivity.
Productivity culture or hustle culture. It’s a very clear, very real societal pressure to maintain. To keep grooming this high level of productivity, constantly working, glorifying, overworking yourself, being rewarded for constant availability and your fast response times to emails and texts and DMS.
Measuring your self-worth by how productive you’ve been. And then being immersed in a culture that fills all the white space with meetings, zoom calls and also frowns on relaxation or doing nothing.
Of course, it’s acceptable to work with somebody to get better at the work or the professional part of your life. Of course, that’s a worthwhile investment. This is exactly the reason that executive coaching for well-being and wellness needs to be more of a thing. Because being a star, smashing the glass ceilings, doing all the amazing things that you want to do, while at the same time enjoying your life and being in a state of wellness. this combination does not come about by doing more of the same and using a hustle culture productivity kind of approach to keep pushing through and pushing harder.
Guilt and self-blame don’t build contentment. They don’t build wellness and happiness. Solving for the whole puzzle, the puzzle that includes you in all the success? It actually requires relearning and also unlearning and support for an approach and habits and beliefs that go against the grain of so much societal pressure. So many societal pressures, actually.
Is this hard? It can be, but let’s be real. I mean, professionally, you do hard things for breakfast. It is much harder, however, if you go it alone. Alone. In your brain. With all the old thoughts that push you in the opposite direction. Right? Add to your to do list. Just do more. Create a two-hour morning routine, and you’ll be fine. And then you end up stressed and tired and starting the circle again.
Making this pivot, changing the foundation, taking care of the whole puzzle instead of just half of it, is much harder if you go it alone. Is it worth it? Definitely. Does success, all the success, the professional, the personal, the wellness, the health, does that feel better and bigger? Most definitely.
So that’s what I have for you today, the idea of executive coaching for well-being and wellness. And I would love to know what thoughts and ideas it stirs up for you.
And of course, if you would like to talk about doing this together and what that might look like, reach out, there’ll be a link in the show notes and we can discuss it.
Take care of your wellness. Take care of your well-being, and it will take care of so much else.
I’ll talk to you soon.